The AirBnb "effect" has directly led to increased home prices. A home turning a profit thus becomes more important than how its guests impact a neighborhood and community. Ignoring or spinning the social costs is a primary goal of Airbnb's PR machine. It has made many neighborhoods more transitory (i.e. less homesteading, more short term rentals). Acknowledge the social costs to community and it's not surprising to read that violent crime rates are trending up where AirBnbs thrive.
Airbnb raises violent crime rates in cities as residents are pushed out
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Re: Airbnb raises violent crime rates in cities as residents are pushed out
#22This is similar to how most murders in the US were caused by Internet Explorer usage: https://i.redd.it/4h8emlr5z3c41.jpg
Re: Airbnb raises violent crime rates in cities as residents are pushed out
#23Maybe criminals like staying at Airbnb. They have the cash after all and Airbnb can easily be used to hide ones identity.
They specifically point out the increase in crime is not from the Airbnb tourists.
I read that a bit differently. They noted that typical tourism related crimes did not usually increase but other crime did.
Re: Airbnb raises violent crime rates in cities as residents are pushed out
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it fair to say "a rise in the prevalence of Airbnb in a census tract in one year predicts increases in crime and disorder in the following year."? Probably yea, that just implies a correlation. Is it fair to say "airbnb raises violent crime in cities"? I think you'd need an rct for that one.
The sentence you're concerned with is the headline of the article, but isn't found in the original paper. Here's how they close their abstract: This result supports the notion that the prevalence of Airbnb listings erodes the natural ability of a neighborhood to prevent crime, but does not support the interpretation that elevated numbers of tourists bring crime with them. "Supports the notion" is a far more nuanced s…
It's possible it might mean fewer long-time residents means fewer people knowing the state and characteristics of a neighborhood and thus fewer people to notice patterns and know what's out of place and not, so fewer people to intervene against anti-social behavior and fewer people calling the cops, so it goes down hill. A tourist might not care about antisocial behavior that does not affect them. Mugging, breaking and entering, theft, etc. Whereas locals would have a stake in the health of their neighborhood and intervene.
Re: Airbnb raises violent crime rates in cities as residents are pushed out
#25The article doesn't mention it - and I can't find it anywhere - but in any neighborhood what is the highest proportion of units that are short-term rentals. Five percent? Ten percent in the super touristy areas? I have no idea and even before the other flaws in the study I am skeptical than anything short of 20% would make an impact on any major attribute of an area. I see one stat in the paper that "40% of buildings…
With regards to your "alternate theory" here's a relevant line in the paper.
> To further test the direction of causality for the results, we use a lag/lead analysis in the spirit of Granger [33, 34]. This method is used when the sample includes multiple years and uses both lead and lagged versions of the treatment variable (τ can be both positive and negative).
I don't have enough experience in econometrics/statistics to evaluate this technique. But I would assume they've determined that the increase in crimes lags behind the increase in AirBNBs.
Re: Airbnb raises violent crime rates in cities as residents are pushed out
#26The AirBnb "effect" has directly led to increased home prices. A home turning a profit thus becomes more important than how its guests impact a neighborhood and community. Ignoring or spinning the social costs is a primary goal of Airbnb's PR machine. It has made many neighborhoods more transitory (i.e. less homesteading, more short term rentals). Acknowledge the social costs to community and it's not surprising to r…
We had anti-hoarding measures on masks but dont seem to have them on homes. Every additional income property you own (and used as such) should have an escalating hoarding penalty.
Re: Airbnb raises violent crime rates in cities as residents are pushed out
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Again, not vouching for the study as a whole - and agreed that scientists can get a bit "creative" when trying to actually describe and motivate causal mechanisms (in their defense, a very hard problem). But I'm just talking about the statistics here, and specifically that saying "correlation is not causation" is a bit overused. Researchers know about it too, those four words don't magically dismiss all statistical s…
It’s an overused phrase because it’s so often true. The analysis acknowledges the possibility of confounding variables but only makes a weak attempt to address it, using demographic info, income, and homeownership rates. This is the definition of a correlational approach. And to make matters worse they throw in some hypothesizing about Airbnb eroding the ‘local social dynamic’. ‘Causal linkage’ is great in theory. In…
So, you're saying because past research has been correlated with causality fallacies, we should just assume it's the case when we see claims of this sort? ;)
More seriously - I'm well aware of the difficulties of causality, and also use causal direction as a great illustration of them. As I've said in pretty much every comment here - I'm not championing the study, I simply haven't done a deep enough pass to have a strong opinion, and it may have any number of subtle flaws (off the cuff my biggest concern is that they're focused on one city, and I'd like to see similar results elsewhere, preferably in different geographic areas and cultures).
In other words, yes - more controls like you said. But I am responding to the overuse of a simple statistical argument in the face of studies that, whatever flaws they have, are not cases of "the researcher forgot the controls." Demographics, income, and homeownership are actually not bad features to have I'd say, and again it seems like most of the large claims bothering people are from the coverage and not the research. To refute research you generally need to dig into the details of the research itself.
Re: Airbnb raises violent crime rates in cities as residents are pushed out
#28The AirBnb "effect" has directly led to increased home prices. A home turning a profit thus becomes more important than how its guests impact a neighborhood and community. Ignoring or spinning the social costs is a primary goal of Airbnb's PR machine. It has made many neighborhoods more transitory (i.e. less homesteading, more short term rentals). Acknowledge the social costs to community and it's not surprising to r…
We had anti-hoarding measures on masks but dont seem to have them on homes. Every additional income property you own (and used as such) should have an escalating hoarding penalty.
These penalties are never high enough to actually discourage the behavior. It's better to just ban accumulating more than X homes, where X could be as low as 1.
Re: Airbnb raises violent crime rates in cities as residents are pushed out
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
The sentence you're concerned with is the headline of the article, but isn't found in the original paper. Here's how they close their abstract: This result supports the notion that the prevalence of Airbnb listings erodes the natural ability of a neighborhood to prevent crime, but does not support the interpretation that elevated numbers of tourists bring crime with them. "Supports the notion" is a far more nuanced s…
It's possible it might mean fewer long-time residents means fewer people knowing the state and characteristics of a neighborhood and thus fewer people to notice patterns and know what's out of place and not, so fewer people to intervene against anti-social behavior and fewer people calling the cops, so it goes down hill. A tourist might not care about antisocial behavior that does not affect them. Mugging, breaking a…
Many properties spending significant time empty seems like another huge issue.
Re: Airbnb raises violent crime rates in cities as residents are pushed out
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
We had anti-hoarding measures on masks but dont seem to have them on homes. Every additional income property you own (and used as such) should have an escalating hoarding penalty.
These penalties are never high enough to actually discourage the behavior. It's better to just ban accumulating more than X homes, where X could be as low as 1.
Im good with that idea on investment properties. Though I have no issue with people having vacation homes. Theres a natural limit to how many vacation homes someone can have without a revenue source on the asset.